


Scatterbrains

by smolhombre



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: 1940s, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Banter, But We will Make Do, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Flawed Characters Trying Their Best, Graphic Depictions of Feelings, Happy Endings By and Large I Promise, I haven't even seen the Sopranos, Insomnia, Introspection, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Less Buzzfeed Unsolved Per Se, M/M, More Unsolved Cinematic Universe, My only Mob references are from the Real Housewives of New Jersey, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Private Investigators, Questionable Journalism, Sleep Paralysis, Sleep Walking, Slow Burn, Solving crimes, The Mob, Unreliable Narrator, doing crimes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-06-11 18:38:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15321744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolhombre/pseuds/smolhombre
Summary: After failing the Sodder family, C.C. isn't exactly sure what he deserves. Moving on and living don't seem appropriate, given the circumstances, so he makes do with something else instead.Or he tries, but it's hard enough trying to outrun your own demons; when other people's shit get brought in the mix, C.C. can't help but think it's right near impossible.





	1. 1. Swallows in Capistrano I

The calls always come as he finally drifts off to sleep. It’s the worst part of the job, though he would never admit it. 

The hallway of his modest home is labyrinthine in the blue dark of four a.m; he bashes his shin against the coat rack, on righting himself stubs his toe on the kitchen door frame, and by the time he reaches the screeching rotary in his den he’s only wondering why he always forgets the glasses on his bedside table when he has to go through this routine. 

“Tinsley,” he grunts into the receiver. He doesn’t bother trying to keep his eyes open now that he’s stationary. It’s close enough to sleep. He was dreaming something good before, he remembers. Something about food; God, when was the last time even ate something that required him to sit down and enjoy it, when’s the last time a dream of his didn’t leave ash caked at the back of his throat —

Suddenly, from the other end of the line, a muffled but clearly spirited trumpet solo cuts through any pleasant thoughts he could have been having, high and sharp darting around the heavy noises of a nightclub.

“Hello?” Tinsley offers again, miffed. He’s awake now, with no chance of getting back in bed. This had better be worth it, and not another charity case. He couldn’t afford another one of those in his docket.   

A woman’s raucous laugh, and the line is dead. 

Tinsley stares at the phone in his hands, brow knotted, until the operator picks up and asks what the problem is.  

_ No problem, ma’am. I apologize.  _

He collapses back onto his couch and stares at the wall opposite until the sun, peeking through the mostly closed blinds behind him, illuminates the clock reading a little past seven. It’s close enough to sleep. It has to be. 

* * *

 

“Ma’am, again. I’m sorry we didn’t get the answers you wanted, but you signed a contract for — yes, I understand. I know it’s not what you wanted to hear, I — but on completion of this job, I’m owed the remaining fifty percent of my — ma’am, ma’am...no, ma’am, I don’t accept _ those forms  _ of payment.” Heat creeps up the collar of his shirt, and he is for once glad he gave up his office space to work from home. If any of the boys had overheard this he’d not have lived it down for months.

‘ _ Gave up _ .’ Tinsley has to bite down something bitter clawing up from his gut. Lost, maybe. Was given the boot. Failed at.  _ Failure. Failure. Failure.  _ Leaving this house and thinking it would stick, going through pains to forget each face in a two mile radius of this town. Trying to  _ keep _ forgetting them each time he has to see them again now, trying to imagine Laura Kerner as another client and not the same woman who brought banana pudding to his home after they buried his mother. All things he fails at. 

“Are you even  _ listening to me _ ?” Laura wails on the other end of the line. “All I got from your ‘ _ help _ ’ was a bruising and a warning to mind my own business. Now  _ I  _ have to pay  _ you _ for pictures of my husband necking with some floozy? How do I explain  _ that _ check to Frankie when he balances the book?”

Tinsley grimaces. The police hardly pay him the time of day, anymore, but he has to ask: “Are you saying your husband hit —”

“I’m telling you to  _ butt out _ !”

The line clicks dead, and Tinsley settles the receiver back on the hook. He scrubs his hands over his stubbled face. He can add “accomplice to wife beating” to his resume, underneath child murderer. His week is turning out dandy.

Peeling himself off the couch, Tinsley ambles to his kitchen and forces himself to reach for a bottle of Coke instead of a beer.  _ After lunch _ , he reasons. He can wait that long. He should. He can. He can. 

Tinsley drains half the pop before deciding to cross Laura Kerner’s name out of his datebook. He wouldn’t call her again. It’s only right.

On the next swig from his drink, he pretends the carbonation fizzing on his tongue is less sweet, more stale. Just the thought of a beer rounds the edges off of his nerves, allows him space in his head to be honest. (The objectivity immediately makes him want to reach for another, a  _ real _ one, but he said lunch, and it’s only ten thirty in the morning if he rounds up from the clock hands —)

Honesty looks like this: He’s running out of names to strike through, running out of cases to follow up on, running out of borrowed time and his savings alike. Running, running, running. 

Tinsley could, of course, pick up something from his Blue Book. The suggestion floats up in a gratingly familiar voice, and his knuckles go white around the glass in his hand.

Jennie had snuck the heavy envelope into his coat pocket while Tinsley had made his goodbyes to George in their new and unfurnished kitchen. He’d tried to mail it back to her after finding it, but the envelope had only come back to him; bad pennies and all that. Address undeliverable. It sits at the bottom of his safe now, under where he used to keep his grandfather’s gun and his mother’s wedding band. It’s a paper weight for the Blue Book. Tinsley won’t ever open it again. 

He scratches Laura’s name through so hard his pen rips through the paper. When he goes back to the kitchen, he doesn’t bother convincing himself that he doesn’t need the hard drink. 

* * *

 

The phone rings at two fifty-three the wrong side of sundown, but before Tinsley can reach it the line is dead. Three nights after, three calls that don’t wait for him to pick up. 

The couch is just as uncomfortable as his bed has become, really. By the second night, Tinsley doesn’t bother starting in his bedroom at all. His feet hang off the arm of the sofa and his neck is a tight cramp almost instantly, but the forty minutes of sleep he gets before the call comes is solid and heavy and warm, just for a while. He closes his eyes after the ringing stops and thinks about penance, and how comfortable it can be to deserve the suffering you get. It’s not sleep, but it’s close enough.

* * *

 

Tinsley has shopped at Sallie’s Grocer for so long he hardly needs to look for anything at all. The things he needs — and he cooks so little and drinks, perhaps, too much, making those things few — appear in his basket more than he picks them out, much less searches for them. He couldn’t recall the colors of the store tiles or Sallie Hurst’s apron even with a gun to his head.

This has been the biggest blessing since moving back home again. If other patrons would look at him sympathetically as he passed by or turn into another aisle to avoid having to fake pleasantries, Tinsley remained blissfully unaware of all of it. In the street, at the barber, coming out from the cinema, these are harder to ignore. But here, ducking mechanically from a display of washing powders to the row of shaving cream at his left, Tinsley is largely, mercifully, alone and ignorant. 

It’s a surreal, pleasant break, like allowing something else to possess his body and take the wheel for a while. If it’s pathetic to find any catharsis in the aisles of a poorly-maintained grocer, that’s Tinsley’s shame to sit in, alone and in private. It’s working well enough for him, really, until he collides solidly with someone’s stocky shoulder the next morning. The shock brings him back to the unpleasant knowledge that he’s in Gauley’s Bridge, West Virginia, reaching for a carton of eggs that he can’t really cook and are the only solid food he keeps in his kitchen anyway, and he’s there because he managed to kill five children — 

“Watch it!” The stranger makes a show of wiping imagined debris from his flashy jacket, his dark brow furrowed. His expression is too sharp, given the circumstances; the clench of his jaw like iron, the tight frown of his mouth a hasty, angry slash through his dark stubble. He’d look more in place if Tinsley were maybe staring at him from the trigger-end of a rifle. 

Utterly befuddled, Tinsley only manages to balk at the stranger. The man is clearly from out of town, judging from his accent alone. He’s wearing a full evening suit to the grocer on a Wednesday morning, as if that is a thing that normal humans do. He is still glaring at Tinsley like he would skewer him clean through with his umbrella, if he could. Nothing about it makes sense. For all Tinsley knows, and since he is the one with years of experience in walking these particular aisles, bumping into each other was entirely the other man’s fault. 

“My jacket isn’t dirty,” Tinsley blurts, the only coherent thing he can manage as the stranger continues to pet at his suit, trying to rub Tinsley off of it.  _ Please don’t make me think about the objective realities of my life in the future and watch your  _ fucking _ step _ is bitten back, but only just. 

“Just your glasses, then,” the stranger snaps. 

He’s in a grocer in Gauley’s Bridge just to buy eggs he won’t eat, and nothing is worth the fight. Tinsley purses his lips and reaches carefully around the stranger for the carton, putting the eggs in his basket with the slow care he’d show a grenade, just for spite. The other man looks more and more incensed the longer Tinsley doesn’t rise to his bait. His face is a deeply concerning shade of puce when Tinsley turns on his heel and walks away.

By the time Tinsley has paid Sallie and tucked his bag into the crook of his arm, he’s done a good job of rearranging the stranger's face to a mushy watercolor in his memory, fuzzy on the edges, colors blurred to nearly nothingness. The dreams are easier when he doesn’t have to face anyone new. Tomorrow, hopefully, he’ll have blocked the whole thing out, re-oriented himself into the nondescript No Man’s Land Tinsley prefers to spend his days in. He can only remember a few faces there, and he doesn’t deserve the pleasure of forgetting them. 

But as he exits the store, a shiny black car pulls to the curb and the stranger, leant up against the nearest lightpost and empty handed, clambers in. He makes a rude gesture towards Tinsley as the car pulls away, and Tinsley has to try erasing his face again from square one.

* * *

 

That night, after a dinner of three forkfuls of scrambled egg and two beers, Tinsley watches the stranger light the Sodder house on fire. The flames cut through the inky dark, and in their intermittent light the stranger shepherds some of the children into his shiny black car. When it pulls away in the dream, the stranger is staring at Tinsley like a dare. The children are, too. 

* * *

 

The house was his father’s, and his father’s father’s, and Tinsley takes up space in it more than he lives there. Since moving back home, he’s done nothing to change the decor his mother once fussed over and has only once dared step in his father’s study. Both seemed disrespectful, somehow, though both his parents had long since passed. If he had enough courage to be honest, he’d say that doing either would make the living arrangement real and permanent. He was rarely brave enough to face that. 

It was fine. He didn’t need to settle anywhere, much less here. After what he’d done, he didn’t deserve the comfort. 

It was fine. He was fine. His apathy only ever seemed to be off-putting others. Only a few moments into darkening Tinsley’s door, and Holly Horsely seems unable to not comment on it.

“Could you look any more morose, Cecil?”

It’s tremendous effort, really, to not bash his head against the doorframe and end this before it begins. Holly’s hands are clasped primly in front of her, her gloves well cared for despite the constant digging (‘ _ mud slinging _ ,’ Tinsley remembers with a wince. That’s what he had called it,) her profession required. Her bright hat sits just-so on the wave of her blonde hair, hiding her expression from him. That, at least, is probably for the best.

“And yet somehow, still, you’re here,” he sniffs, stepping aside to let her through. “Come into my joyless, morose home.”

He takes her coat off with practiced ease, hardly thinking of it as he hangs it on the rack in his entry, then follows her into his kitchen where she helps himself to his bourbon. She pours him a glass only after she’s taken a long sip of her own.

“Thank you,” he accepts waspishly. She hadn’t changed at all, though he can’t decide if the resulting pang from that realization is positive or not.

“Don’t pout. Your face is sad enough already, and any more grey in your hair would be a real shame.” She tugs her gloves off, placing them on his counter where her hat follows. Only after she finishes the last finger of her drink does she rise up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I’m trying to be nice, you know.”

Tinsley tosses his drink back. “Nice people call before making a visit.” 

“To be fair, most nice people aren’t in the habit of visiting  _ you _ .”

He follows her to his living room, and he doesn’t shake her off when she plops her feet in his lap, laid back comfortably on the other end of his couch.

“You haven’t returned my letters. I told you I was coming to town, this is what you get for not bothering to open them.”

“I’ve been busy,” Tinsley grunts. Before, he might have taken her heels off, traced the stocking seam lining the sole of her foot. He refrains, now.

“Busy in your Blue Book?”

He glowers, refusing to grace that with an answer. Holly aims to hurt first, placate later, like the initial sting was necessary to open someone up, peek at the pulpy, vulnerable bits inside she liked to poke at. Holly plays with her food. Tinsley knows that. He won’t rise to the bait. He won’t. He won’t. 

“Look,” she sighs, having the audacity to look annoyed. “I just wanted to see if you were alright.”

“...You came here for a story, and you’re stuck, and you want my help,” Tinsley realizes. It is definitely a pang of disappointment that hits his gut, this time.

“I  _ also _ have a story,” Holly concedes, lips pursed. “I have never  _ needed _ your help with my work.” She fiddles in her purse, pulling out a packet of cigarettes and a book of matches. Tinsley takes the offered smoke wordlessly. “I wouldn’t say _ no _ to your input on some of the ideas  _ I _ have.”

“Unbelievable,” Tinsley scoffs. “You are a real piece of work, Horsely.”

“I remember that being our unifying factor, once.” Her smile is genuine — Tinsley can just see the little snaggletooth of her left incisor behind her lipstick. It’s the only thing, he reckons, that could get him to relax even a little as he takes a drag of the cigarette. It’s quiet and still for several long minutes, caught where the past and present overlap each other when the light hits just right. Her perfume is the same still, though her hair is much longer than she’d liked to keep it, before. He’s wearing the same shirt they’d once had to clean red wine off of in her kitchen, heads bent close over the sink. The stain never disappeared fully, or maybe Tinsley just imagined the outline of it still there like he sometimes imagined Holly’s manicured hands dripping pink water to her linoleum floor. He remembers her face, still, when he refuses to remember others. 

Holly is, of course, the one to break the spell. She taps ash into the tray on his coffee table, still smiling. Her cheeks are bright from more than her rouge, and new aches start to fill the gaps between the old still at home in Tinsley’s body. “You didn’t replace the other one.”

“The one you broke?” Tinsley snorts. “No. It wasn’t worth the effort. I don’t smoke near as much without you, anyway.”

“That might hurt my feelings, Cecil.”

He watches her throat bob as she takes another drag. “But it doesn’t.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she agrees, all business again. A sleight of hand to see any softness in her face to begin with, a practiced trick in her hat she pulls out and surprises Tinsley with each time like the first. “Look at my notes, Tinsley. Tell me what I’m missing...before I find something else of yours to throw against the wall. Maybe your dumb face, this time. You need some sense knocked into you.”

The smoke pulls Tinsley's lungs into a tight, dry pinch. He keeps it there until he can’t anymore. All the things Tinsley remembers about Holly that are sweet and easy to hold are gone like a blink. Only the jagged bits hang onto him, little spurs hooked inside his ribs that grate him to something useless and soft. “So you can blackmail another man into giving you the headline you want?”

Holly groans, falling back against the couch with an arm slung over her face. “Let it  _ go _ , Cecil. What’s it to you? What does it matter if he needed some prodding? He killed those girls, and we had a right to know about it. You’re only upset that I broke it before you got to do things your way.”

“You know I don’t believe that.” Tinsley carefully pushes her feet off his lap. “And you know I don’t care about you getting to the bottom of something before I do. But if the story was good enough, if the story was  _ there to begin with _ , you wouldn’t have to come up with some ruse—”

“ _ Leave it _ , Cecil,” she snarls. She puts her smoke out in the tray, flicking ash from her fingers onto his carpet thoughtlessly. The familiar gesture makes something weak in him tremble like a plucked string. He isn’t sure he could stand to see it again.

It’s quiet while Tinsley finishes his smoke, mulling her over and trying to pretend she’s brand new to him, that this argument is fresh and could end differently. Holly keeps his gaze, shrewd and even as she waits for his line, her cue to finally cut into him like she came here to. 

He takes another drag, holds it and the words both behind his teeth. This is old and familiar, turning into something new and green. Holly looks down at the ashtray like she’s already made her mind to chuck it like she did with the last one. 

“You didn’t want to help me with the Hawk’s Nest story, and look how that turned out when you stopped being stubborn. You can do it again. It’d be good for you.”

“In your expert opinion?”

“It’s better than moping in your mother’s house all day, not getting paid for snapping dirty pictures of philanderers and whatever else it is you do to pretend you can bring those kids back if you make yourself miserable enough.”

He snuffs his cigarette out so hard the ashtray falls to the floor. When he rises from the couch, it’s all he can do to not flip the coffee table with him as he goes. His heels smear the ash into the rug beneath him. “Shut your fucking mouth, Horsely.”

“He’s got chutzpah, now,” Holly says drily, rising to her feet. She isn’t smiling anymore. “Swear at me again, Tinsley, you big lug. I’ll knock your lights out.”

Tinsley smiles at her, thin and mean. New feels like this. Old, maybe, also always feels like this at the end. “Get out of my  _ fucking _ house, Holly.”

Her arms are crossed over her chest, and Tinsley watches her knuckles go white as her fists clench. She’s clocked many a big lug before, but Tinsley doubts she’d really hit him, even if he deserved it. He thinks. He hopes. 

“It would be,” she steps forward, knocking into him roughly with her shoulder as she passes, “my  _ fucking _ pleasure, Cecil.” 

She collects her gloves and hat loudly from his kitchen — he hears glass clatter to the floor in her wake, but he refuses to go look — and soundly topples his coat rack over as she snatches her jacket. The door slams behind her, and Tinsley counts nearly a full minute before he marches to his hall closet —  all wood, a toy soldier — and gathers the broom and dustpan. 

* * *

 

The rest of the eggs he picked up at the grocer earlier in the week are cracked. After cleaning Holly’s mess and convincing himself that eating at least one meal today was necessary if not entirely worth it, Tinsley heads to Tim Mackey’s Diner and hopes Timmy isn’t feeling too creative with his daily specials. 

He reads the paper while Tim’s daughter pours him a coffee, trying to block out the noises of the restaurant around him and the echoes of his fight with Holly still loud in his ears. The paper had passed through so many hands before now that ink has smudged and flaked on the seams. The words still holding on swim without meaning moored to them as Tinsley works half the bitter, cheap coffee down his throat. The cover is the war. The cover is always the war. Inside, though, is the news. 

Tinsley convinces himself that the first bite of his tomato sandwich is good, and the rest follows easily enough. He eats mechanically while he reads. Some of the words even stick, when his belly gets full enough.

Sallie’s had been burglarized the night prior, and it’s the first thing that gives him real pause. His little quiet place. His little reprieve. Tinsley has to read the story three times to get the real gist, and after he can only see the empty handed stranger leaning up against the lamp post outside of the store when Tinsley last left. 

He could ask around, see if the stranger was still lurking in Gauley’s Bridge in his evening suit. He could talk to Sallie —

_ Whatever else it is you do to pretend you can bring those kids back if you make yourself miserable enough—  _

He takes another bite of his sandwich. The police will handle it. That kind of stuff isn’t his job anymore. Nothing is. 

As he leaves, he sees Holly ducking out of the cinema across the street, a cigarette clenched between her teeth. He’s surprised to see her still in town, though maybe he shouldn’t be. She’s huddled under the marquee as the sky opens up above them and the first drizzle of spring starts to fall. She avoids Tinsley’s eyes, and despite everything it fills his chest with affection, grateful and steady. 

* * *

 

The trees around the farmhouse trap all the cold night air tight like a snowglobe around it, keeping it separate from the rest of the world.  

Holly’s only in her slip, and though her fingers are pink from the cold, she doesn’t shiver. Her set hair is wrapped in a scarf, like she’d just risen from her bed on a whim for a stroll and a smoke. The wind is so icy her eyes are shining and wet when she winks at Tinsley, who watches her dumbly with his hands in his pockets. 

It is impossible, but when she kisses the lit end of her cigarette to the outside of the house, it smolders to a burn that eats one wall before it starts to swallow the rest. Fast but so, so slow. 

She wraps her arms around Tinsley’s waist like she wouldn’t ever do in the world that exists outside of the treeline. They aren’t warm, and the flames that start to breach the edges of the snowglobe aren’t, either.

* * *

 

To his utter dismay, after the first nightmare Tinsley sleeps better than he deserves. On waking to his phone ringing at half past five, there are a few moments where Tinsley only feels the slow, heavy limbed fuzziness of a good rest. The shrill ring cuts through his dark house again, though, and Tinsley promptly forgets the comfort. 

Tinsley trips on the area rug in his hall before catching the phone, grumbling and rubbing at his abused toe as he greets the caller.

“Hello?”

“Is this Mr. Tins — is this C.C.?”

He nearly drops the receiver. It’s a child’s voice, familiar even without the nickname born of being unable to pronounce his given one properly.

Tinsley clears his thick throat. The hand not clenched around the phone is fisted so tightly his nails are cutting into his palm. “It’s very early, George. Do your parents know you’re on the phone?”

A sniffle. Tinsley has to fight not to crumple. “I just. I just wanted to know if…”

“You should go to bed, Georgie.” His raw throat makes it come out rougher than he means to; gruffer, more unfeeling. It’s the last thing he wants and is the only thing he’s left with to offer.

“I’m sorry, C.C.” His little voice warbles, and Tinsley is going to lose it, his vision swimming, his knees wobbling — 

“Don’t apologize, George. I’m... _ I’m  _ sorry. But you need to go to bed before your Ma catches you. You’ll get a switching.”

“...Goodnight, C.C.”

“Goodnight, Georgie.”  _ I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  _ It’s too small a sentiment to be honest, so Tinsley keeps it to himself.

* * *

 

_ Whatever else it is you do to pretend you can bring those kids back if you make yourself miserable enough—   _

Tinsley doesn’t bother with a glass when he reaches the kitchen, knocking the bourbon back straight from the bottle. He drinks without breaking for air, which has fallen somewhere to the bottom fifty things Tinsley needs for immediate survival. 

The worst part about Holly is that she was right more often than she wasn’t. She only didn’t slap him earlier because she knew he’d come to this conclusion on his own. Nothing could be more satisfying than this, surely; Tinsley stood in his kitchen at five forty a.m., sock footed and in his underwear, chugging back cheap alcohol that doesn’t even make his eyes water anymore. Actually hitting him would have ruined the  _ real _ sting.

Tinsley flings the empty bottle in his sink, and the sounds of the glass shattering there don’t break any of the lead-like pressure bearing down on him. He doesn’t so much as cut his foot as he storms out into the hall, careless of the mess; nothing to give him some relief, nothing to give him some penance. Nothing that makes him suffer enough, even a little. 

_ And for what _ ? 

Tinsley knocks over the small hall table on his way back to his bedroom, kicks the door open hard enough to make a hole in the paneling.

_ All  _ this _ for  _ what?

He swallows four aspirin dry in his bathroom and splashes his face with water as cold as the tap will go. His bathroom floor is a mess before Tinsley feels even close to coherent. 

Holly stayed because she knew he’d change his mind. He’s not selfless or decent enough to let things lie, arrogant enough still to believe he could fix things instead of making them worse.

When the morning has started to bleed light into the hall, Tinsley opens the safe. He’s surprised despite himself at the sight of the Blue Book, and even more so when he manages to pull it out, carefully not touching the envelope atop it. 


	2. 2. In a Mist

After the cramped, dank tents in Palermo, Banjo stopped believing there were conditions under which a human being couldn’t sleep. West Virginia proves him wrong. 

The call is a relief, really. Whatever waits on the other end of the line is surely less exhausting than trying to force unconsciousness to swallow him up, remembering the way the lightfeelsound of war used to swaddle him to sleep. In his new, clean bed, he has to invent noises to cut through the humid mountain air, recreate the rhythm of a second heart that comforts between the beats in his first; the rustling bedrolls, the whisper of metal being polished, the quiet sniffling reserved for the private hours of two a.m., turned away from the other bodies in the tent. The call shatters the drone of a remembered air raid drill, and he’s glad to be on his feet. 

It can only be one person, and they barrel over Banjo before he can manage even a grunt in greeting.

“Mickey. It’s me.”

Banjo rolls his eyes at the nickname. Sergio refused to let him give up his father’s moniker, the one thing he was eager to leave in New York. Figures. “Who else would it be, Sergio?”

“ _ Ricky,” _ he corrects sharply. Banjo can almost hear the sound of Sergio’s cigarette filter crushing between his teeth through the phone. “How many times do we gotta go over this? One time, McClintock, and that’s all it takes for them to find us.”

“Yeah. Better hope we’re not tapped,” Banjo shrugs, unbothered. 

Sergio — Ricky — whoever he’s decided to become — swears on the other end of the line. “See if you give a damn when they find out how many of their grannies and mistresses you put a bullet in,  _ Benjamino _ . I don’t think anyone has forgotten your name.”

Banjo sucks his teeth. He won’t have this conversation again. He followed Sergio after coming home. There’s nothing more he can fairly ask Banjo for, no matter how much he enjoyed having old arguments new ways to get his rocks off. “It’s almost four in the morning,  _ Ricky _ . What do you want?”

“Business. Ten minutes, behind the druggist.”

Naturally, Ricky can find trouble in the Appalachian wasteland on the wrong side of dawn. Banjo shouldn’t have ever dreamed this could end differently. They could have skipped the first few minutes of the call altogether. “What are we wearing?” 

Ricky only picked up the cigarettes because he wanted to learn to blow smoke circles like in the cartoons. Banjo pictures him blowing one such now, pulling at his tie with his free hand. He’s probably looking onto the street below the window of his new apartment like an asshole. “It’s chilly out. Pack heavy.” 

“You shit-stirring  _ schmuck  _ —” Banjo groans, but Ricky is off the line before he can hear. Like a beat dog, Banjo starts to dig for one of the pieces stored away in his new apartment. The guns are the only things that are mostly, properly his; even the clothes on his back were borrowed on his return or hastily stolen on his way out of New York. He chooses the most discreet pistol from between his mattress and bedframe, hardly bothering to check how many rounds are left in it. Banjo doubts he’s going to have to even reach for the thing, no matter Ricky’s request. Most of the time that Ricky asks now, Banjo doesn’t. But Ricky wouldn’t enter a church without at least two pieces, and that’s not counting the blades tucked in the soles of his shoes. It is one of Ricky’s many bullshit neuroses that Banjo has to tolerate.

The heavy blanket of the late hour stretches over the still unfamiliar streets outside of Banjo’s apartment, blurring all their edges and pulling them close so it looks like it could be anywhere else. The brief freedom the darkness affords him feels like the bottom dropping out of his stomach again, the plug pulled and all his guts circling the drain. He imagines these streets are the same ones in Harlem he’d tread trenches in before shipping out, the same ones he’d perched over in Mont Ormel, fingers numb around the trigger of his rifle, the same ones he’d swept down in Sicily, the thumps of his boots echoing in the empty spaces where sound normally shouldn’t be.

He’s as dramatic as Ricky. That’s what makes them deserve each other. 

Banjo picks up his pace as soon as Ricky’s silhouette is visible at the end of Main Street, the welcome sight of a lit Lucky Strike pulling at his marionette strings. It’s the first good thing he’s felt in maybe two full days.

Ricky’s dressed in a full suit, his shoes shining obscenely in the streetlamp light haloing his stocky body. He’s even freshly shaved. Banjo hardly remembered to pull a pair of pants on as he was reaching for his doorknob. 

“Tell me why this was necessary, Ricky.” Banjo comes to a stop just out of the streetlight’s reach, arm outstretched. He makes a point to wave Ricky off when he starts to speak. “Smoke first, what are you, an animal?”

Only three puffs into Banjo’s cigarette and Ricky can’t keep quiet any longer, nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet like holding the words back is a physical effort. Over Ricky’s shoulder, Banjo sees the Mayor shift at his post at the street corner, and he can’t suppress a little shiver. He focuses on the dry, tight drag of the cigarette in his lungs and nothing else. 

“I’ve looked enough. This is the spot. You go — you, and Mayor —  _ Mickey, are you fucking listening to me _ ? You and Max, you hit the grocer. I want it irreparable. I want it loud.”

“Oh, is that what you want?” Banjo snorts, only half listening. There’s a little breeze in the air that barely rustles the trees around them, still damp from last night’s rain. The whisper is the same as a big inhale past the crushed tobacco leaves in his smoke, and it feels just as good, if he lets himself really think about it. If Banjo dares to sleep with his window open, maybe he could even hear it, maybe he could sleep —

Ricky lashes out, viper fast, and grabs him by the scruff of the neck. He drags Banjo down the few inches he has on him so they are eye level.

“The shit did you say to me?”

He half-heartedly tries to bat him away. “Oh, fuck off, Serg—”

Ricky unhands Banjo’s neck only to make space for his fist. The  _ thunk  _ against Banjo’s jaw rings in his ears only after his vision starts to swim. It’s an effort not to swing out himself, but Banjo knows that will only make it worse. He stumbles back from Ricky, wiping away blood from his split lip with the back of his hand. 

“You’re getting real fucking familiar, Benji. I don’t  _ negotiate  _ with you, and if you want me to listen to your smart mouth, you’re gonna have to start paying me instead of the other way around.” 

If they weren’t friends, Banjo thinks, maybe he’d take his chances and see if his pistol had rounds in it after all. If it were anyone else, Banjo wouldn’t have let them even throw the first punch. 

But Sergio’s mother made Banjo ribollita the night before he was deployed and a plate of pizzelles to boot, her dwindling sugar rations bedamned. He was sure they’d be the last good thing he’d ever have to eat, taking his time until the plate was just crumbs and half her remaining tin of coffee was gone, too. Banjo remembers the taste until he doesn’t want to kill her son anymore.

“Fine,” he nods. “Whatever you want,  _ Ricky _ .”

“Spook ‘em. I want that old bat to pay good for my protection.” Ricky adjusts the collar of his unseasonably thick jacket. He fiddles in his pocket for a moment before slipping something into Banjo’s hand. “Leave this before you go, let them find it.”

It’s a sky-blue pocket square, the fine silk almost watery between the clench of Banjo’s fist. He feels embroidery on the heel of his palm, but he doesn’t need to check the dove-grey initials to know what they are.

“You are an absolute lunatic,” Banjo slurs, spitting blood at his feet. “I’ll make it hurt. Get out of here before we have anymore light on us.”

Banjo had died once for Sergio. After that, he’s learned to tolerate the rest.

* * *

 

Benji was weedy for longer than he should have been, when all the other boys in his class had broadened in their chest and started to stubble on their jaw. It hadn’t bothered him until the first time he’d been thrown to the ground behind the cinema, when his height suddenly didn’t matter in the face of Anthony Profaci’s newly bulky arms. Benji couldn’t force himself to be bigger than he was, so he settled for being smarter and meaner. It worked. It continued working, until it worked too well. He finally gets a little weight on him after he deploys, but that’s nothing he can know as he uses a wastebin lid to smash Giuseppe Schiro’s hands against the pavement for trying to steal his thin wallet.

His ma thought his skinniness was easy enough to solve with extra spoonfuls on his plate where they could spare it, which addressed the one problem. For the other, when Benji started thinking about the thick, roping muscle of Anthony Profaci’s arms as something other than a way to get his ass beat, well. His ma didn’t confess everything to Father Scalice, so Benjamino didn’t see why he should, either. There were worse Catholics on their block.

Sergio Gallo finds him on the steps of St. Anthony’s, waiting for his ma to finish one of her mostly honest confessions after being forced to give one of his own. He has stacks of communion wafers tucked in his tattered jacket, bold as you please.

“Tired of being fuckin’ hungry,” he offers without preamble, sitting down beside Benji and sticking the sleeve of crackers out like an offering. A real one. “Pops drinks the fucking money and gambles the rations. Jesus said give to the hungry, yeah?”

Benji, largely unversed in what Jesus actually said despite his mother’s best efforts, nods dumbly before taking the cracker. “Something like that, I heard.” 

“And you look fucking hungry.” Sergio proclaims, easy and confident, and elbows him in the ribs until Benji takes another wafer. “So that makes me your Jesus.”

Sergio’s pa did drink all their money — Benji’s mother shared their rations with Sergio’s enough that Benji was familiar with the drawn, gaunt shape of both their faces. Real hunger. Real shame. Sergio’s dark eyes shine with a real meanness above their sharp cut, and Benji is struck with the realization that Sergio is the authentic version of what Benji has made himself to be; genuinely small and cruel and sharp. Clever in the soft places that Benji thought, maybe, you were only supposed to act had been calloused over.

“I’m as hungry as you are,” Benji shrugs. 

“Your ma does what she needs to get money for you to eat,” Sergio says baldly. The new turn of his grin is nasty, near feral. Benji isn’t as hungry as Sergio, and the extra padding in his stomach softens the stab of shame in Sergio’s implication. “You can’t be that hungry. But I share with the deserving and the undeserving, cause I’m fucking nice.” He holds the crackers up and out of Benji’s reach. His smile is a little softer, maybe, but that could be the light. “Say thank you to Jesus. What are you, an animal?”

* * *

 

The Mayor is silent behind Banjo, more than any living thing has the right to be. It’s unsettling in the light of day with Ricky to buffer them, but without either comfort Ricky’s ghost is downright menacing. 

“I’ll take the back,” he murmurs, desperate to put space between them. 

“Whatever you need to do.” Max’s voice, perpetually hoarse from disuse, barely filters up from behind him. It’s the last exchange they have before Banjo smashes the front window in, his jacket balled up around his fist. The chaos that follows is methodical; Banjo no longer feels the pleasure in overturning the register and swiping the contents of the cigarette case. Max has probably not felt pleasure in anything over the course of his existence, by Banjo’s rough estimation. Following Ricky’s orders is likely as close as he gets. 

The Mayor sets about the aisles as Banjo walks back to the office, the crashing noises blurring to a familiar riot that’s easy enough to ignore as he trashes the place. He takes care to half hide the pocket square in the debris like it had been dropped there accidentally, but otherwise only really pays attention to the  _ clicks _ of the tumblers on the store safe as he jimmies it open. Everything else is muffled, everything else could have happened a million other places before this one. It could be sleepwalking, could be the lullaby drone of planes above his tent, could be the Apostle’s Creed his ma would make him recite before bed, where he’d doze before Jesus got to suffer under Pontius Pilate. 

He mentally splits the new weight in his pockets into three, distantly satisfied by their heft  as he makes it back out into the front of the store. The first threads of dawn are spinning lilac up through the broken window, shining through the bottle in the Mayor’s hands like a prism. The wet rag shoved in it drips, acrid smelling, onto the floor. Banjo tosses him a pack of matches and hightails it out through the window before the Mayor follows, tossing the little explosive over his shoulder with deceptively easy aim. 

The fire is small, and one of the nosy neighbors will undoubtedly call the fire brigade before it gets even half that bad, if they haven’t already. It’s not important, though. Banjo has all but forgotten about the past forty minutes of his life by the time he’s unpacked the goods into his safe and used the washroom at the end of his floor. The sleep, when it comes, is dreamless and heavy and dark.

* * *

 

Sergio is too flashy to steal. Even when he tries to be quiet, he manages to angle his body just so in the light where the buttons on his shirt glint like they are begging to be looked at, his pilfered pocket watch shining like it was brand new and begging to be bought. After a while, Benji can’t decide if it’s on purpose or not; maybe he and Sergio were just made of different stuff down to the meat and marrow. Maybe Sergio wasn’t made for the quiet or discreet.

Sergio is too flashy to seal, but it’s always his idea. Benji creeps through the laundry drying on the lines in Yorkville and they sell the woolen coats and silk shirts to whoever in Harlem can afford them the most. He takes a part time job as a driver Uptown and they pawn off the bits and bobs he snatches from his passenger’s wrists as he escorts them to their door, trading them for more than Banjo thought little pieces of silver could be worth.

Sergio deals with the money, which never means as much to Benji. He can’t remember the last time he was hungry enough to suck on the raw scraps of potato peels, trying to draw them out until they dissolved to tastelessness in his mouth, and his ma has artichoke  _ and _ eggplant in her kitchen now more than she doesn’t, which is the only measure Benji has for their success that matters. It works. It continues working, until it works too well. 

By all accounts — and they had heard all accounts, sworn at them loudly from any given street corner in Little Italy — Ricky was a little too much a Jew, a few grandparents back, and Benji far too Irish, another thanks to his useless father, to qualify to be involved in the Family Business.

This, also, works for them. Caesar Maranzano is a dog. Sergio might have envied his money, but Banjo couldn’t find it in him to appreciate even that. 

But money in New York is all the boss’ money, even when that boss isn’t yours.

* * *

 

“Something wrong with the grits?”

Banjo blinks up at the waiter, suddenly aware of all his limbs folded up awkwardly in the diner’s cramped booth and the bent spoon in his hands, stirring idly through some quickly congealing goo.

He clears his throat. “Delicious,” he offers flatly, having not tasted even the first bite. “Coffee?” 

The waiter tops him off, looking pointedly at Banjo’s bowl all the while. He’s thinner than even Banjo, from his bony wrists to his neat moustache to his grey hair, and white as a ghost to top it off. Under his baleful glare, Banjo stomachs a spoonful of the cold goop, rewarded by a more purposeful flow of coffee from the pot to his mug. 

“New here, yeah? Staying in Madge’s son’s tenement?”

The food is bad. The locals are worse. Banjo hates West Virginia and everything that brought him here.

“Came for work. Nothing left after I came home, nothing good.” Banjo maybe feels a little guilty for playing the war card. Maybe. If it didn’t always work so well, maybe he’d stop doing it.

The waiter’s expression softens. He claps Banjo’s shoulder as he leaves the table. “You need anything you ask for Tim, alright? More grits, coffee...you ask, y’hear?”

Banjo hides his grimace behind another sip from his mug as a tall blonde woman settles in the booth across from him. Her long, narrow face ends in a blunt jaw under her pursed mouth, her eyebrows very well groomed over the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses. 

“Coffee and a ham biscuit for me, won’t you, Tim?” She asks, hardly turning to look at him as she digs for something in her purse. Her smooth, accentless tenor carries through the whole room. The few other patrons in the not-quite-noon crowd look her over with the same reserved curiosity Banjo has been sentenced to, and when he takes another gulp of his coffee his smile is genuine. This is likely the most outsiders Gauley’s Bridge has seen at once. 

“Something funny?”

He snaps up to the woman’s attention. She’s looking at him expectantly, her arms crossed on the table. There are little red indents from her glasses on either side of her nose, her brown eyes flat as the coffee in Banjo’s hands and not nearly as warm.

“Woke up this morning in West Virginia,” Banjo shrugs, suffering another spoonful of grits. “Can’t think of nothing funnier.” 

She snorts in a very unladylike way, but he’s lost her interest in favor of Tim returning with her breakfast. He’s prepared to toss some bills down on the table and go when a man even taller than Banjo stumbles in the diner and immediately into the seat across from the woman. His thick, sandy hair is in disarray, his jaw stubbled silver. He reaches for the woman’s coffee wordlessly, gulping half of it down despite the fact that it must be scalding.

The woman only looks at him for a long moment before deciding to speak, her voice dry as old paper, the stuff you’d set on fire first.

“You smell like a goddamned distillery.”

The man scrubs a hand over his face. The bags under his eyes are swollen purple as a bruise. His knuckles are all mottled green and blue with settled blood, littered with little cuts. 

“Got a call from Georgie Sodder last night.”

His drawl is much more at home in this little diner, suddenly too small and stripped of all the air to breathe. Banjo goes as still as the woman across from him.

_ Impossible _ . 

There are a thousand George’s in West Virginia, and Sodder wasn’t the most unique surname — maybe the man didn’t say Sodder at all, his drunkenness or accent one muffling the syllables together for “Stauffer” or...or —

“You should eat, Cecil,” the blonde hums finally, pushing her plate towards him. “I’ll only have this conversation with you sober.”

Cecil.  _ Cecil _ . Banjo scrambles to place the name, white knuckled around his cup. Ricky couldn’t afford this coming back to haunt him after his first real move.  _ Banjo  _ couldn't afford it. He nudges his hat down further over his brow, burying his face in his coffee as he strains to listen.

“Don’t act like a martyr now, Holly. You don’t want to have this conversation at all, so what does it matter?” Cecil snaps. He pushes the biscuit back. “I came here for work, not a breakfast date.”

“No, I don’t want to, but I’m going to suffer through it for the  _ thousandth time _ regardless. Eat the biscuit, you drunken louse.” She downs the rest of the coffee before waving for Tim. “‘ _ Came for work. _ ’ If you come to work as  _ sodding drunk _ as you are now, I see what your problem is.” 

Cecil stares Holly down, eyes red-rimmed and bleary, before reaching for the plate. He eats three pointed, slow bites before pushing it back. Banjo nods silently when Tim comes back around to fill his cup up again, grateful for a reason to stay. 

The Sodders weren’t even the biggest problem they had dealt with that  _ week _ , and yet they’re the one that haunted them to this shithole town. Banjo scalds his tongue on the next drink. Legs said he’d  _ handled it _ , all the loose strings, all the missing —

Banjo stills mid-sip of his coffee, counting them all off in his head. Ten children, nine in the house. Five of them, sorted. George and Jennie, taking off with the children they had left. A cousin on the wife’s side who helped them canvas the town after, never heard from again. Three cops, the lead on their payroll. A private investigator, who wasn’t a problem until he found Old Bull Barrie on that jury...

But Legs  _ handled _ it. Barrie left the country, fled up to Canada, and they didn’t hear anything else from —

_ Tinsley _ , Banjo remembers, sudden as the blaze that ate the little farmhouse. C.C. Tinsley, the private investigator. Caesar Maranzano never asked Legs or Night Night about the body, but by that time Banjo and Ricky both were willing to let him tie his own noose. Too comfortable in his seat, too confident in his inner circle and his sloppy  _ capos _ both. 

Another one of his problems, suddenly Banjo’s. He would have stayed in New York if he still wanted to deal with this shit. 

In the booth across from him, Tinsley fumbles in his pocket and pulls out a small blue book. Holly is fixed on it immediately, unable look away from Tinsley’s hands even when Tinsley begins to speak.

Something she wants, then. Banjo stares at it himself, like he could see through to the pages if he squinted enough.  _ Learn their currency _ . How many times had Ricky preached that like the gospel? Banjo looks from the book to the woman again, then back to his coffee. He’d have to snatch it, somehow.

Tinsley tries to clear his throat, like he wants to sound more sober than he looks. “I can’t — can’t make it right, Holly. You were...weren’t wrong, the other day. I wanted to fix it, still. I thought, you know. In the back of my mind I always thought I would put it together, eventually. If I had the time, it would just. Thought it would come together. I could make it come together.”

Holly puts her hand on Tinsley’s. She very carefully doesn’t touch the book. Tinsley takes a deep breath, then another, until he looks like sobriety is possible in his future. Banjo watches Tinsley’s free hand twitch like he stopped himself from putting it over hers, and he files that away, too. 

“Tell me about your case, Horsely.”

Holly pulls her hand away, taking a long look around the dining room. Banjo makes a show of finishing off his grits and flipping the page of the paper in front of him until she speaks again. 

“Not here, Cecil. Sober up first. I won’t babysit you.”

Cecil slams both of his hands on the formica tabletop as he rises to his feet. He hulks over Holly, but she only leans back, arms crossed over her chest. Her expression says, in no uncertain terms, “I dare you.”

“Finish what you  _ fucking _ start for once, Holly. What else do you want from me?”

“I said  _ later _ , Tinsley,” she grinds out, casting another purposeful look around the diner. 

Cecil follows her gaze, rucking a hand through his hair, his rumpled jacket pulling against the broad stretch of his shoulders. He pockets the blue book without another word before turning heel and walking out of the door. 

Banjo pinches the bridge of his nose. He needs to start the hard drinking himself just to begin unknotting this new mess.

“Enjoy your show?”

He grimaces as Holly comes to stand at his booth, tapping the toe of her shoe against the floor, arms crossed over her chest. 

“You want to fight with your husband somewhere no one can hear you, dollface, maybe you keep it at home, yeah? ‘S what the walls are for.”

The light coming in from the window behind her shines through her hair like gold. Banjo is surprised despite himself that her cheeks begin to splotch; he hadn’t guessed shame or embarrassment would be in her emotional repertoire. 

“ _ Dollface _ ?” she hisses. “How dare you, you big — you dog-faced  _ void coupon _ !” She reaches over and, with a great flourish, upends his coffee on his lap. Before Banjo is even fully on his feet, she’s out the door, hardly the whiff of her ambery perfume left behind her.

* * *

 

Benji, before he was Banjo, spent a lot of his time moping. The Maranzanos kicked most of that habit as their triggerman before General Rawlins strapped a rifle to him and kicked the rest. Benji was glad for it, once he finished moping about his lost hobby. Behind the scope, laid flat on his stomach for hours until his mark was in just the right place and the wind was just so, moping would have been the easy way to pass the time.

But Benji knew better, because Sergio tolerated moping even less than Caesar or Rawlins did. It wasn’t worth it. He hadn’t properly moped over his lot in life in what felt like years, and there’s poetic justice in finally doing so sprawled on not-his mattress in not-his apartment, the sulfurous smell from the coal mines heavy in his nose and latched onto everything from the drapes to not-his clothes, too short in the hem, too tight on the new squidge around his belly.  

Banjo’s lot, quite frankly, was the worst. 

He should tell Ricky about this morning; as his boss, if not just as his friend. He should have followed that skirt out of the diner, should probably have gone ahead and handled the investigator the moment he’d pieced his identity together. There’s no way this doesn’t become a problem, sooner rather than later knowing his rotten luck. 

But.

But.

Banjo swings his legs off the bed, stumbling to the record player. He’d had to leave his guitar in their old apartment, and he itches to strum it again, probably the only thing that could make him feel better from a place that matters. As he flips a record onto the tray, he tries to remember the way things that aren’t a trigger feel under his fingers. Strings humming with a F sharp, the thin paper of a Lucky Strike, the way his ma’s red sauce would drip out of the wax paper under the weight of a meatball sandwich, the way the muscle of someone’s thigh goes just a little more taut when you trace nonsense on it up from their knee. Banjo hardly hears the music as he presses his forehead to the cool glass of his windowpane, fists clenching reflexively. 

He should tell Ricky. It’s a death warrant, but Banjo should be used to signing those by now. What’s a few more bodies to his ledger? Ricky will kill them both, without a doubt, one way or another. He’s too smart to try and hide this from. They’ve been friends long enough to split the blood on their hands between them to make it a bearable weight to carry. By meeting them today, Banjo has killed them already. He should be merciful about it and not drag their death march out.

He takes a deep breath.

The F sharp. The smoke. Something warm to eat, then something warm to sink his teeth into.

One more time, he catalogs the things he can do without getting someone hurt along the way. He counts them:

  1. Smoke. (Until he has to steal the smokes, until someone looks at him the wrong way when he’s too far out from a smoke, until someone tries to interrupt his smoke with a favor or a question or walking by too close.)
  2. His guitar. (Until someone interrupts him trying to work through an eight-count, until someone tries to snag it to trade for a bindle or a chippy.)



The record skips, and Banjo is glad. He’s only allowed to be good at one thing, and that’s —

Banjo rears back as a rock half the size of his palm collides with his window pane. Before he’s even really had the thought, the gun on his night table is out and pointed down at the dame from the diner, looking up at him from under her hat, visibly alarmed but not running away.

He doesn’t lower the gun as he opens the window with his left hand. 

“Lost, miss? That’s vandalism, what you just did. I should call the elephant ears on you.”

“You can come down or I can come up,” comes her clipped reply. Her blouse is the kind of blue that’s almost grey, and she idly plucks some debris from the sleeve as she waits for his answer.

He tucks the gun into the waist of his trousers, already looking for his shoes. 

_ Fuck _ .

Banjo’s lot is the  _ worst _ .

“Saw a picture about this once,” Banjo waves around them as he comes to a stop in front of her. “Had a real nice ending. Some Romeo and Juliet business. You looking for a tall, dark stranger?”

“How much do you cost?”

Banjo stills. “Thought this was all a joke you were in on, miss, but I’m not that kind of bird. I have my reputation to consider.”

Holly cocks her head to the side, her bright lipstick somehow making her frown look even heavier. 

“Benjamino McClintock, how many C’s for a job?”

It’s only years of practice that keep him upright. For the second time today, Gauley’s Bridge has given him something impossible. Benjamino McClintock died in New York. There were papers to prove it. He’s dreaming. He’s fallen asleep. There’s no way some dame in no man’s land could find him in the space of a day.

“Who—?”  _ Who are you?  _ Banjo shoves his hands in his pockets to hide his clenched fists. “Did you follow me from the diner? You coulda just asked me if you could come callin’. Hell, I might have saved you the trouble and come to you.”

“I don’t need to follow you, everyone’s been talking about the new Yankees in from out of town.” Holly steps forward so she has to crane her neck up to look at him, her voice very low. “I’m no expert, but if I wanted to run from something I think properly changing my name would be high on the priority list. Makes it harder for people to look into you.”

_ Ricky, you goddamned fool. I’ll kill you myself. _

“How many C’s?” She repeats, slow and clear like he’s hard of hearing.

Banjo makes a show of bowing, stepping to the side with his arm stretched to the front door. “Classy skirt like you, maybe it’s free.”

Faster than he can expect, Holly grabs Banjo’s tie and yanks it so they are face to face.

“Don’t make me think you’re too stupid to pull this off,” she snaps. “Cut the shit. I need you to steal something for me.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi :)
> 
> The struggles I had posting this chapter...unbelievable. Virgo season is victimizing me, personally.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I took the chapter notes out from Chapter 1 and I'm not posting the notes for Chapter 2 here either. I have a shiny new [fic specific tumblr](http://scatterbrainswing.tumblr.com) where I may post them if you're interested in any research I've done, or if you just wanna submerge yourself in a Mood(tm) for a while. You can also come chat with me on my [personal tumblr](http://violetteacup.tumblr.com) too :) I just realized the notes will contain potential spoilers as the story goes on and take up a lot of space, so I'll probably put them all in one chapter at the end once this fic is finito.
> 
> ANYWAY. Thanks again for sticking with me, any feedback is appreciated more than I can say. See you in Chapter 3!!

**Author's Note:**

> Can you ever do enough research for historical fiction? No. So what do you do instead? Hardly any. Enjoy.


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